


Serpentum

by plutosrose



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020 [24]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (Steve and Sharon), Alternate Universe - Ancient Civilization, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Germany, F/M, Historical Accuracy Attempted, M/M, Nonmonogamous Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27943499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: But even in Roman red, he couldn’t mistake the face that was staring back at him, deep blue-gray eyes and dark brown curls.For a moment, he forgot his sword.“Bucky?”“Who the hell is Bucky?”-An Ancient Civilization AU based on Netflix's The Barbarians.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020 [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882291
Kudos: 23
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020





	Serpentum

**Author's Note:**

> Even though this based, in large part, on Netflix's The Barbarians, I watched maybe half of it and didn't pay much attention, so you don't need to have seen it to understand this story or this series. Although it is not mentioned here (and it may be mentioned in future parts), this takes place in Germania, the forerunner to Germany.

Steve and Sharon were crouched in a bush, hidden from the Roman officers, who had decided to set up camp in the clearing. From their position on a hill, high above them, they could see how far the landscape was dotted with tents. Romans moved between them, in full battle armor, sharpening their swords and tending to their horses.

“They got here a week ago,” Sharon murmured. “Erksine said that they’re demanding tribute from the nearby tribes. It’s only a matter of time before they approach him too.”

Steve watched as the soldiers, clad in Roman red, went in and out of tents, torches burning bright in the darkness. “They can try, but there’s no way that he’s going to bow to them.”

Sharon shook her head. “You forget what happened to James.”

He hadn’t forgotten.

-

His mother wrapped him up in her arms, a gesture to comfort him, but to also make sure that he didn’t run headlong into a group of Roman soldiers. He and Bucky had played soldier more than once, running around with training swords that had been crafted by Bucky’s father. Bucky would be lookout while Steve sprang forward to attack an unseen enemy.

And she was right to do so, because every instinct in his body told him to run forward and to try to pry Bucky out of the Roman soldiers’ hold. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured, running a hand through his hair--but even at that young age, Steve could tell that it wasn’t going to be okay.

“Help! Please! I don’t want to go!”

Bucky had been screaming up until one of the soldiers had slapped him across the face, reprimanding him in Latin that he probably didn’t understand.

Bucky was put on a horse with one of the soldiers, and as they rode off into the distance, Steve curled his hands into his mother’s skirts and cried harder than he had in his entire life.

-

“You’d think that they would have enough soldiers for their army without taking children,” Steve noted, mouth twisting into a wry smile. Sharon frowned.

“Did you notice that?” she gestured at the standards that were flying on the tents, high above the camp.

The snake-like creature reminded Steve of the swamp that his mother had made him swear--even when he was little more than five years old--that he’d never try to cross.

“Do you know what it means?”

Sharon shook her head. “But I don’t think that it could mean anything good.”

Steve nodded--with the Romans, nothing good ever happened.

-

When Steve and Sharon got back to the village, they heard screaming immediately. Steve went for his sword, and Sharon reached for one of her knives.

Erksine’s house was at the far end of the village, fitting for a chief. There was no immediate sign of him, but the screaming was definitely coming from his home. They hurried toward it, only to be met with Roman soldiers, holding a sagging Peter between the two of them.

But even in Roman red, he couldn’t mistake the face that was staring back at him, deep blue-gray eyes and dark brown curls.

For a moment, he forgot his sword.

“Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Bucky said something in fluid Latin to the other soldier, who burst out laughing. Steve’s understanding of Latin had been patchy at best, formed only by spying on Roman soldiers whenever they came through the tribe’s territory. And although he didn’t have a perfect translation of what Bucky had said in his head, he could tell that it was chosen to make him immediately angry.

Roman was Roman, and he shouldn’t have hesitated to kill both of the soldiers on the spot--even if it would likely get him tied to a stake and burned alive for his trouble.  
Bucky simply shoved him back, and he stumbled, as though he was entirely weightless. Sharon stood back too--she was a formidable warrior in her own right, but there was no chance that she’d fight without him. She’d always been smarter than him that way.

Bucky and the other soldier dragged Peter past them. Steve sucked in a breath and tried not to look directly at him. Although Peter was older than Bucky had been when he’d been taken from the village, it didn’t make it less horrible–especially since Peter’s face was swollen and bloody, having clearly fought back as they wrestled him away from his family.

As Bucky was about to leave, Steve jogged over to his horse. “Bucky, you don’t have to do this.”

Bucky looked right through him, as though he was a complete stranger that he’d never seen before. “Orders from Alexander. Nothing I can do.”

“That’s ridiculous, Bucky, of course there’s something you can do,” Steve shot back, before realizing that in all these years, it had never occurred to him that Bucky would have ended up on the front lines of another Roman occupation, as a soldier.

Peter was whimpering from his position on the horse--Steve glanced at him and tried to reassure him when the other soldier Bucky was with came up from behind him and slammed the butt of his sword into his back. The force, combined with the element of surprise, made Steve crumple to the ground.

“You have to be more forceful with them, James,” the soldier said, sneering above Steve. “Barbarians don’t know their place--you see him?”

The soldier pointed at Peter, who was, by this point, sobbing as quietly as he could. “He’s one of the lucky ones,” the soldier’s smile was too wide and too toothy, predatory. “He’s been chosen for civilization, meanwhile, the rest of you have been left behind to rot.”

Steve glared up at him, and was about to tackle him--consequences be damned--when Bucky put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “That’s enough, Rumlow. He wasn’t part of our orders.”

Rumlow spat at him and mounted his horse. As Bucky turned to do the same, Steve locked eyes with him. He wasn’t a Seer like Sharon’s older sister, but he could tell that there was something important in that glance, an important harbinger of things to come.

-

“He looked at me like he didn’t even know me,” Steve murmured, shaking his head. Sharon leaned up on her arm so that she could face him better, long blond hair cascading down, blanket wrapped around her body.

“What happened to him wasn’t your fault, Steve,” Sharon ran a hand along his chest. “He was a child. We were children.”

“It doesn’t make it right.”

“It doesn’t,” Sharon agreed. “I didn’t mean to say that it did--only that you can’t blame yourself. If you’d run after him, one of those soldiers probably would have just run a sword through you too and continued on their way.”

Steve furrowed his brow, and Sharon leaned in to kiss the crease in his forehead. “I can tell that you’re thinking.”

“There was a moment,” Steve admitted cautiously, “where he seemed...different. Like he used to be.”

Sharon raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

Steve let out a sigh and shook his head. “I’ve never been sure about anything.” He let out a sardonic laugh. “Is that something that Peggy can find out? Can she See--”

Sharon shook her head. “You know that’s not something she can just do--the visions don’t come to her because she asks for them.”

“Could you--”

“We’re not having this discussion again,” Sharon sat up, letting the blanket fall past her breasts. “I don’t have her power.”

Steve clenched his jaw. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

He reached over and moved a strand of Sharon’s hair behind her ear. If the gods had been kinder and not taken his parents, perhaps her father wouldn’t have been trying to marry her off to a lord from another tribe. Perhaps he would have been able to make her his wife.

Sharon’s expression softened, as though she could see his thoughts, and she reached over to kiss him deeply. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back into his lap, his cock twitching back to life.

-

In the middle of the night, Steve crept back to the Roman camp. He hadn’t told Sharon where he was going, because he knew that she was going to talk him out of it. She’d always been a lot smarter than him, that way, able to way the consequences of an action against the action itself.

The look of horror on Peter’s face came back to the front of his mind. He clenched his jaw.

He crept into the camp as cautiously as he could, keeping to the shadows. There were soldiers everywhere, but he’d been watching the Romans come through their territory since he was a kid--he wasn’t afraid of them.

He clamped his hand around one man’s mouth and ran a sword through him before he could scream.

He let his body fall to the ground as he crept, in search of something important--something that would make the Romans leave for good.

He’d seen the golden eagles before, wings spread and jaws open, like they were just about to snatch up their prey. The Romans loved them, and placed them in the middle of the camp, a symbol that their army had been blessed by the emperor.

There was no golden eagle here--but rather, a golden serpent, one that matched the creature on all the banners that flew above the tents, its jaw unhinged and ready to swallow its enemies.

So far, the guards hadn’t noticed him, but they were milling around, not in a clean formation. In an instant, Steve had bolted ahead, slitting the throats of the two guards who kept watch over the golden serpent, before he wrenched it out of the ground.

Men were shouting now, and he ran as quickly as he could with it, before heaving himself over a nearby horse and coaxing it into a full gallop back into the forest.

He was halfway between the camp and the village when he decided to cut the horse loose–the last thing he needed was for Roman soldiers to see it and decide they needed to punish people who hadn’t been anywhere near the camp. He planted the standard in the ground and let out a sigh. 

He’d only made it a few more feet before someone tackled him from behind, and he landed bodily in the wet dirt.

“What are you doing here?”

Even after all this time, he would have recognized that voice anywhere, even in the dark.

He twisted around to face Bucky, who was keeping him pinned by resting on his mid-section. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Bucky,” he murmured, staring up at him, having a difficult time repressing the impulse to thumb the dark curls at the base of his neck. Bucky, for his part, reached back and drew a dagger, pressing it neatly against Steve’s neck.

“I could kill you right now.”

“You won’t.”

“Steve, you don’t know what I will and won’t do.” And this statement felt particularly harsh and biting, because more than a decade had passed since the last time that he’d set eyes on him. It was true. He didn’t know what Bucky would do anymore.

And yet-- “I know you,” Steve said plainly. “And you won’t do that.”

Bucky let his hand fall for a moment, before he threw his dagger with impressive precision, embedding in the bark of a nearby tree. Steve squirmed underneath him.

“This is bigger than either of us,” Bucky shook his head, but Steve just pulled him down and slotted his lips against his, kissing him deeply and fiercely.

“I thought I lost you when they took you,” he murmured into his skin. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Bucky curled into him, deepening the kiss, and reaching into his trousers to wrap a hand around his cock. Steve did the same--even though it was awkward trying to navigate his way through a Roman soldier’s uniform, (and a little painful, considering the way that Bucky was resting against him, it was digging into his skin), but he wouldn’t have traded this moment for anything else.

He wrapped his hand around Bucky’s cock, stroking it as best he could from the base to its tip, twisting his wrist at the head. Bucky mirrored his movements, and they began to gasp increasingly desperately into each other’s mouths.

Lying in the dirt and the leaves, looking up at Bucky, it was almost enough to forget that they were on the edge of a Roman camp. “I’m going to have to tell them I saw you. You killed three men. And they’re not going to let the standard go that easily,” Bucky murmured, pressing his forehead against Steve’s. Steve nodded–this made the most sense--if Bucky was caught lying, then very likely both of them would be killed. Even now, he wouldn’t let Bucky take that kind of risk for him.

Steve reached out and ran his thumb along Bucky’s jaw. “It’s okay. Do what you have to. I’ll be okay.”

A brief expression of worry flitted across Bucky’s features. Steve couldn’t help but smile–even now, he would know Bucky anywhere. That hadn’t changed.

-

Steve raced through the woods from the outskirts of the camp back to the village. He nearly ran straight into Sharon.

“Erksine’s dead,” she gasped, like she was out of breath. “The soldiers came back and took more children and--he just walked off. I think he walked into the swamp.”

Steve put his hands on her shoulders. “I have to go right now, I’m sorry.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t have to do that--your family’s here, I don’t want you to--”

Sharon’s expression was hard, impenetrable. “You don’t want me to what? Steve, if they’re after you, they’re after me too. That’s all there is to it.”

Steve sucked in a breath, and nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

No sooner had he pulled Sharon after him into the woods had soldiers come through the clearing on the opposite end of the village. For a moment, Steve was transfixed by the way that their swords gleamed menacingly in the torchlight, before Sharon elbowed him hard in the side and pulled him after her.


End file.
